Wednesday, 27 July 2011

other strong contenders for yesterdays favourite; coffee with friends, hunting for goblins, fountains, the sheer joy in a child's eyes at the sight of a Huge chocolate milkshake, a choice of 3 gluten free cakes (I might just have alarmed friend with squeals of delight.....), a quilt to snuggle in on a chilly evening, relief that the tiny local sports shop did indeed sell individual football studs and we didn't need to drive miles searching, homegrown courgettes in a risotto (apart from when I peeled my finger instead of the courgette, but apart from that....), giggling at texts about campers trying to put up satellite dishes, kendal mint cake.

Monday, 25 July 2011

First week of the summer hols;the first visitors of the summer have been and gone. a trip to the beach and our local fave National Trust estate to tire them out.the school uniforms have gone in the wash. apart from E's trousers which have gone in the bin; too short and too many holes.....the school timetables have come down. hurray.the annual summer calender (made from a huge piece of wallpaper taped to the side of the fridge) has gone up.E has happily written in the 4 days of football camp he has this weekMiss K wrote in a trip to the library and a visit to a friend for this afternoon.tomorrow morning we have coffee with a blog friend. last time we met there was much discussion about whether she would be an axe murderer or not, hence the labelling......

she has also drawn lots of sweets on Thursday's square. I assume this is wishful thinking.

Saturday, 16 July 2011

I turned on the computer late last night to write a post that balanced out the garden one from the previous Friday. I'd taken photographs of nettles and bindweed rampaging amongst the flower beds and the beans, and of piles of rubbish next to the shed, and of the grass that is growing through into next doors garden and probably driving them mad. but I didn't quite get the photos uploaded, or the post written.

you see every time I turn on the computer I find more and more "social networks" to distract me.

first of course is google reader, where I catch up with all your news, then this week I joined twitter - and I can honestly say hand on heart, "I don't understand it...."

and then there is pinterest. miles and miles of inspiring things to look at, to like and repin and comment on, and giggle at the comments of others, coffee lady and Lynn have a hilarious thing going on about bicycles and muffins.... I do have a problem with pinterest though, much as I love it, oh and boy do I love it, but I get this sense of overwhelming when I spend too much time on it. so much to create, so many beautiful things I'd love to have, so many kitchens to get green with envy over, endless gorgeous hairstyles I know my hair won't create, places to go, endless things to make and eat and .........

lastly there's facebook. it's a funny thing facebook, I have friends who I see every week, friends who live across the road, relatives I've not seen for years as they live in foreign lands, friends from years gone by, blog friends, and friends of friends. whenever I log on I catch up with little snippets of news from far and wide - news of my sisters engagement (bet not everyone finds out this way....) and of new blog posts to check out, and photos of parties and holidays and all manner of things. every once in a while I'm even on at the same time as a friend and then you can "chat" as I did this week with Lynn, almost a real time conversation, the occasional "hurry up" thought, as facebook informs you that ..... is typing. so much to say. so much news to catch up on.

last night it was different though. I read one update that stopped me in my tracks. someone wrote that her husband had died suddenly only a short time after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. he was just starting his chemotherapy treatment. and was only 2 years older than me. I suddenly didn't know what to think, we didn't know him well, he was the brother in law of one of my oldest friends, but we'd seen him last summer and no one could fail to like him. I felt an urge to shut off from everything, enough, no more information, I don't want to read posts like this, I'd rather not know, and I decided to just walk away from it all, no more, I shall become a hermit, a technophobe, delete all my accounts.

but you can't hide, the information is still out there, and it doesn't go away just because you ignore it. so I realised that this is the balance, the negative that comes with the positive, the north and the south, I can't just have the pretty pictures and show off my garden, and admire cupcakes, and dream about quilts and wooden worktops. there is a real world out there too, and I can't pretend it doesn't exist. life isn't perfect, and I can't hide from that, and the support and inspiration and friendship that I get from being here is the balance I need, but it requires a certain amount of honesty, I should have photographed my nettles last week, instead of pretending that everything was perfect, and but I'm not going to show you them now - this post is long enough already.

nurturing small seedlings in what the children have christened the "grand cascade"

delighting in the bunting that Miss K hung on the chicken run

and admiring this alium.

it took a lot of work to get the garden fit for a photo shoot, so I'm going to wish you all a very happy weekend and go and pour myself a glass of wine. we have the first quiet weekend in what seems like forever, so we're are going to enjoy it, the answer machine is getting turned on, the mobiles are getting turned off, and I have serious plans to drink tea and read a magazine!

hope you all have a lovely weekend whatever you do, I hope there is some relaxing in there somewhere. xxx

I live near the sea in Northumberland where I drink a lot of tea, bake gluten free cakes, make quilts, and walk on the beach. The rest of the family includes J - understanding hubby, Miss K - 17, and E - 15.